SION 
centuries ago. Father Thames himself helps.the retrospection, for 
_ here, on the whole, he has not greatly changed. A great deal 
muddier, as to complexion, a little greyer and duller as to locks and 
beard—for such we may designate the trees and grasses about his 
banks—all this he has become ; and his quiet backwaters, with the 
clear brown pools wherein fish loved to lurk, have gorie for ever. 
Mud is more in evidence; it is no longer hidden by reeds and 
rushes, nor even by the pollard willows of the Eyots which here and 
there, as at Chiswick and Kew, cut the stream in two. The wild 
flowers are sparser, the vegetation less verdant ; but the swans still 
nest upon its banks. And one must remember that a tidal river, 
which—always running, may be said to have solved the secret of 
perpetual motion, yet never stops to tell it to us—is, even in respect 
of this everlasting movement, in one sense, always the same. 
Father Thames has grown older, but his character has not changed, 
and he is as subject to moods now as in the far-off days when the 
young Lord Guildford Dudley and his child-wife, a pair of happy 
lovers then, with no foreboding of the fate before them, spent their 
honeymoon weeks at Sion—which was at that period in the pos- 
session of Lord Guildford’s father, who was John Dudley, Earl of 
Warwick, and for a short time, Duke of Northumberland. 
And because in the reach of the river that stretches from Isle- 
worth to Twickenham, there is, nowadays, comparatively little 
’ traffic, one is seldom rudely awakened from retrospective musings ;~ 
from the vision of the time when, though the shipping of the 
Thames was insignificant compared with what it is at present, 
the river was London’s great highway, alike for pleasure and for 
business ; when the King’s state barge, and my Lord Protector’s, 
and my Lord of Northumberland’s, with many oars, plied constantly 
between Whitehall Stairs and Sion—and the stream was alive with 
small craft, insignificant in tonnage, but picturesque beyond 
compare. 
For reliable information regarding Sion, I have been very much 
indebted to two clear and able articles by the late Colonel Eustace 
Balfour, which appeared some years ago in the Magazine of Art, 
and which are invaluable aids to an appreciation of the ancient 
family seat of the Northumberland family. The author’s wide 
architectural experience and taste, and his own close connection 
with the House of Percy, rendered him peculiarly well-qualified to 
101 
